Part 20 (1/2)

As if she could have married Carter! When Hattie was too old for Carter. When Hattie was too short for Carter. When Hattie had no taste. When they were too like brother and sister, when Hattie was impossible. When she didn't see where he was coming from; when she didn't see where others were coming from. When she didn't see how things worked. What the world was.

”Don't you see?” Carter would say. ”Don't you see?”

There was a n.o.bel laureate next door to the Hatchery; Hattie was not nice to him because of his prize. Neither was she nice to his minions when they treated students the way they had been treated.

”You forget that you yourself will only be a minion, as you put it, for a while,” Carter said. ”Do not overinvest in this cause.”

And: ”Not every grievance is founded, you know. What's your evidence?”

And: ”You identify too much with the trod-upon. It's an outsider's outlook.”

But she could not help seeing what she saw-people treated as expendable. ”They make themselves part of the picture, then just get airbrushed out,” she said.

Carter shrugged. ”This is a lab, not an experiment in living.”

”You sound like El Honcho.”

”I don't care who I sound like, and may you learn not to care, either.”

They had different ideas about integrity. She believed it something in the person; he thought it something in the work. Not that there weren't lines you couldn't cross-there were, absolutely. Still, he thought it important to understand where you had leeway; he thought it better to be effective than n.o.ble.

”You're like Meredith,” he said once. ”More interested in how the world judges you than in what it becomes.”

And: ”It's a kind of vanity.”

And: ”There's no doing right without doing wrong.”

And, once: ”You're not on trial.”

”Interesting,” she said.

”It's important to know your position from yourself,” he said.

”Is it.”

”Miss Confucius, enough.”

She was in training in his lab for now, he would say. When the day came for her to go, she should go. And, they hoped, if they played their cards right, maybe come back as an equal, someday. If not to the university, then at least to the region.

”We have to be able to have lunch,” he said, several times. ”You must agree to be sure of that.”

And of course, she would promise, though she would not have taken either his word or hers too seriously had he not hesitated over his hummus and pita one day and added, thoughtfully and deliberately, ”I'll help you.”

”If you remember, you mean,” she laughed.

But he didn't reach for a carrot stick as she thought that he would. Instead, he looked her square in the eyes and said gently, ”I'm going to do everything I can.”

And when she laughed again, he said, ”Hattie.”

And, ”Don't laugh.”

To which she replied, ”I'm just trying not to cry, Carter.”

And when he put his sandwich down, and wiped his hand, and took her hand for a moment, she accepted it. And when she got an offer at a far-off lab, she accepted that, too. And when a job opened up in his department, he let her know right away.

”This is just right,” he said. ”You go away and then you come back. Perfect.”

Hattie made the shortlist; her job talk was a hit. But then Guy LaPoint began to call Hattie Carter's mistress; and when the department chair sought out people's opinions, as he liked to, Carter did not speak up for her.

The job went, in the end, to Guy's protege.

”I thought you were going to help me.” By special dispensation, Carter and Hattie were actually talking, for once, out loud on the phone.

”People thought it was true,” said Carter.

”But it wasn't.” Hattie fingered the nubs of her bedspread. ”People see what they see, Hattie. You know that. What they're primed to see.”

”But I'm not your mistress.”

”There was no use insisting.”

”Because we are construing creatures, you mean?” she said.

”Hattie.”

”Because our brains can't be stopped from editing out the ambiguous and unexpected in favor of the 'predicted' and 'coherent'?”

”Insisting would have only further reinforced what they thought, Hattie. Moved it into their cortical storage. You know that. Once there's an established mental framework ...”

”Don't people ever change their mind?”

”Hattie.”

”What would it have cost you to say something, Carter? You have tenure.”

”Hattie.”

”Did you really just not want to p.i.s.s Guy off? Is he that dangerous?”

”Hattie, stop.”

”I know. I never have understood these things.”

”No, you haven't.”

”And why shouldn't you see by the light of your interests, right? It's how we're made. As the Chinese say, 'If it has milk, it's the mother.' ”

”Miss Confucius. Stop.” He sounded as though he were sixteen again, and upset over his guitar. ”Stop.”